Gate 1:
- 1-2 minute DPS CD's when the 2nd and 3rd wastewalker drops
- Multi-doters dot everything
- Dispel dot
- Focus down Wastewalkers one at at time
- Jump on Dinomancer immediately, burn to 50%, then back on Wastewalkers.
- Cleave, other adds, and just clean up after wastewalkers

Gate 2:
- quickly burn first priest before any effusions can spawn
- 3 minute DPS CD's when the 2nd and 3rd priest drop
- Effusions have dps priority when they spawn
- Kept interrupts up on effusions and priests
- Try not to get any poison dots on the raid.

Gate 4:
- Melee on small gate adds 24/7
- ranged spread 5 yards
- Ranged Burn down one war bear
- Ranged DPS shaman, then back to next war bear (trying to keep only one shaman up at a time)
- Melee taunt Dinomancer and melee get Dinomancer down to 50%.

I think that we have Gate 1 and 2 down solid when we don't screw up. Gate 3 seems to put us way behind on DPS. Gate 4 also seems very slow on DPS. It seems the shamans should be dying quicker.

As Gate 4 is opening, we still have one Warlord up (about 20% or so) when our DPS is really the doing their best. Most attempts, our DPS is behind even before that point.

So, my question really is this: Is our strategy flawed? Do we just fail at executing what I put above?

To help out, i've included a video from twitch of our *best* attempt last night.

We finally killed this last night and it really comes down to calling out people tunneling boss. Ranged should only have dots rolling on boss. Once we finally got everyone to understand that the faster the add dies the faster everyone can get on the boss we got to last phase every time. Our adds dropped so much faster we even left a feral druid on the boss full time. Once the last Wastewalker, Priest and Warlord is dead at each gate melee should finish up the lesser adds and ranged get in damage on boss.

On the fourth gate we just kept me (dk) and a hunter on flame caster just alternate grip, strangulate, mind freeze to get them in full cleave range and they would always melt before a 2nd flamecaster came out. Burn first bear asap then shaman. When the next 2 bears come out have horridon tank grab one bear, OT grabs the other one with all the adds. Once 2nd bear is dead and shaman comes out, OT taunts 3rd bear off of Horridon tank this way you cleave down the 3rd bear as 2nd shaman is dying. Just call out to stop dps when you see Hex going out in case you get it so you don't kill yourself.

Your strategy is very much the same as my guild are using. Though on the 4th gate, we have most of our melee on bears/shamans. We use 2-3 for interrupting the flame casters. Burn first bear down and try to kill shaman before next 2 spawns, your Horridon tank can take 1 of the 2 bears that spawns to make it easier for melee to not get cleaved.

Also you need to be way better at interrupting the dinomancer. The boss cannot be at 97% when you are finished with 4th gate.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te0r-MzFTgY
Heres a link from our first kill this week, and you can see that the boss is at 58% when the War-God is dead. 10% of the boss each gate is a nice goal to set.

Heres a link from our first kill this week, and you can see that the boss is at 58% when the War-God is dead. 10% of the boss each gate is a nice goal to set.

I disagree 100% with that. Setting some arbitrary % will only result in people going "oh noes, he's too high = focus on boss, ignore adds". Granted, there's almost no chance of killing him if he's barely scratched after all 4 gates, but aiming for 60% on first kill is way too optimistic. Proper interrupts and add handling will ensure that boss will be "low enough" anyway.

I disagree 100% with that. Setting some arbitrary % will only result in people going "oh noes, he's too high = focus on boss, ignore adds". Granted, there's almost no chance of killing him if he's barely scratched after all 4 gates, but aiming for 60% on first kill is way too optimistic. Proper interrupts and add handling will ensure that boss will be "low enough" anyway.

Thanks, I tend to agree. People already *want* to tunnel the boss, so they don't need more incentive to sit on boss. Our Dinomancer interrupts were just terrible, that's why he was at 98%. We've improved on that last night and gates 1, 2, and 3 have been going quite smoothly.

Gate 4 is still a problem for us. We've switched to 2 or 3 melee on the casters that spawn, and the rest of the dps on the bear -> shaman combinations. On our best attempt, we were just barely getting the last shaman down whenever the War-God would drop.

Here's a short video of an attempt showing just Gate 4 and then wiping in P2. We had already used 3 rezzes and we're down a dps into the 4th gate.

Thanks, I tend to agree. People already *want* to tunnel the boss, so they don't need more incentive to sit on boss. Our Dinomancer interrupts were just terrible, that's why he was at 98%. We've improved on that last night and gates 1, 2, and 3 have been going quite smoothly.

Gate 4 is still a problem for us. We've switched to 2 or 3 melee on the casters that spawn, and the rest of the dps on the bear -> shaman combinations. On our best attempt, we were just barely getting the last shaman down whenever the War-God would drop.

Here's a short video of an attempt showing just Gate 4 and then wiping in P2. We had already used 3 rezzes and we're down a dps into the 4th gate.

The hardest part for us was making sure we had battle resses still available when we got to the boss burning phase. It really helps to be able to get a tank up (they will be taking a TON of damage).

For Gate 4 we burn the first flamecaster right away that comes out then get on the bear. We had a DK grip the flamecaster into melee and cleave killed it pretty quickly, we also had a warrior sitting on flamecasters to interrupt most fireballs, but still kept the rest of melee on bear/beast shaman and cleaving the group. When the next 2 bears come down we have our Horridon tank pick one of them up, this helped us a lot with positioning and damage taken. When lightning totems go down if ANYONE sees them make sure they call them out and to move away, if you have hex and get hit with a totem it could be an instant death if the person didnt stop damage with hex on them.

Thanks for useful info on here. Any suggestions on who to be the add tank? We run a war and pally. Pally is a bit less geared at 512 (but not all ideal pieces) and no tier. Was leaning to keeping the pally on the boss.

We're working on this fight as well and I'm wondering if it's better to 3 tank it? We're having some issues with adds getting spread out. Or is that more of an issue of too much AoE/cleave and not enough single target priority?

I've only done it in 10man, so my suggestions could be COMPLETELY off. From what I can see, there doesnt seem to be too much of a difference between 10/25 in how to deal with the adds(except that you seem to have melee dps to tank the small adds a bit)

From the video that I watched, it seemed like there was a lot of focus firing issue. Adds that should die quick aren't dying in favor of splitting damage between 2-3.

Flame casters on gate 4 aren't that big of an issue as long as they are interrupted. so only leave just a few dps on them, just enough to kill one before the next while keeping interrupts

I feel like your G4 diniomancer stayed up for a while (much more adds than is necessary imo) but that could also be the focusing down issue. And 2 shamans up at the same time isn't too ideal, even if you have a lot of ppl that can decurse.

Watch out for the cleave/totems of course, and having people spread out is good way to reduce raid damage.

That's all I can add to it, as it seems like you have it almost covered. Just keep trying and optimize your tanking path/dps priorities .

Also you need to be way better at interrupting the dinomancer. The boss cannot be at 97% when you are finished with 4th gate.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te0r-MzFTgY
Heres a link from our first kill this week, and you can see that the boss is at 58% when the War-God is dead. 10% of the boss each gate is a nice goal to set.

While having the boss below 60% after the 4th gate is a nice goal, keep in mind that does NOT translate to 10% per gate. If you do 10% of the boss's health on the first gate, by the time you have a 150% damage bonus that's 25% of the boss's health, which you're obviously not doing. It's closer to 5/7.5/10/12.5% (95, 87.5, 77.5, 65%). This disparity and misunderstanding of the mathematical implications behind the damage buff is what causes ranged DPS to unnecessarily focus the boss far more than they need to. It's helpful for everyone to try to explain that to your DPS if you find them doing too much damage to the boss.

Ya we spent a few hours on this last night for the first time. Got to the 4th gate a few times but the the 3rd gate was where we fell behind. We are popping our army's for the 3rd gate to increase the amount of bodies out for diseases. Anyone have any other tricks for that gate exactly?

We killed this a while back and ran into the same issue with falling behind on DPS. What we ended up doing (which seemed to work out pretty well, but it might've just been in our heads) was once the first Frozen Warlord pops out on the third gate, everyone tunnels it to death. Once it is dead we had our melee continue to kill warlords and our range to cleave down smaller adds. Depending on your DPS this could help. As always you're going to want to single target warlords down, and try to be sure no Frozen Orbs are spawned near the 4th door.

Honestly the 4th door is where you will probably have most of your problems. You're going to want to coordinate Beast shaman kicks (obviously) and when they drop from a warbear you're going to want to have basically all of your dps being focused on them aside from a few people. What we did was have 4 or so melee DPS to stick on the flame casters and kill them/kick their casts. Just as a precaution to ward off against being gibbed by chain lightning (which unfortunately the Beast Shamans cast while on the back of the bears, and its uninterruptible). Given that, you're going to want your raid to be spread out as much as you can, keeping so that people are in range of the Dinomancer when he spawns for mages/priests to get the mending interrupt. In addition, mages and shamans should be on the ball for decursing melee and tanks when theres a Beast Shaman out.

Your strat seems really solid, though. It's essentially the same thing that we did, minus a few trial and error door tweaks that we found worked well with our raid. The biggest nerf to this fight is definitely gear, though. We went from killing it 35 seconds into enrage to killing it with over a minute left before enrage. The faster you can burn the 'big adds' the more DPS you can put on Horridon in the door phases. Keep working at it.

EDIT: Okay after watching your vid I have some more comments.

-No matter how much DPS you do to the adds, you will never kill this boss if you let it heal that much. The whole fight, Horridon hovered around 95%. You're going to want to push into the Jalakk phase with him with AT MOST 76-80% health. Multiple Dinomancer heal ticks went off. If everyone focuses DPS correctly each Dinomancer should cast only once. Under NO circumstances should it ever get 3 casts off. Even with 2 casts, he should never be healed more that 1% each cast. You have two mages in your raid, that's really all you need. Have them make a focus macro to CS their cast, and have them pick up Glyph of Counterspell. With no side effect to their DPS there's no excuse not to get the cast immediately while using the glyph. In the log you posted, Dinomancers healed Horridon for a total of 176,635,476. That is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much.

- On the last door, you shouldn't have all of your melee on Flame Casters. As I said above, only enough to kick. The order might be a little bit off, but the focus of that phase should be sort of like this: War Bear > Beast Shaman > Dinomancer to 50% > War Bear > Beast Shaman > War Bear > Beast Shaman. Get a kick rotation for CL casts, because from your logs, it looks like casts are getting off while Beast Shamans aren't on the bears, which should never happen.

- You should be tanking Horridon a little bit closer to the raid for multi dot purposes. since people should be running out with their charges so that the double swipe is parallel to the current door, there's no point in keeping him in Africa so that no one can touch him. It's going to make a huge difference once your raid gets used to the doors, especially since with your DPS it looks like you're going to be seriously dancing with enrage. On our first kill (which was well into the enrage), we had Horridon at 89% going into the second door, and then around 85% going into the third, then 80% going into the 4th, and then I believe 74% when Jalakk dropped down.

- The last phase of the fight is a completely different animal. It's IMPERATIVE that you guys set up a CD rotation for Jalakk's aoe AND every dire call. You should get AT MOST 3 of Jalakk's bestial cries (obviously use lust to get him down). As soon as Jalakk dies, your tank WILL die if he doesn't get a strong external. Horridon goes absolutely apeshit and tanks will take ridiculous damage. For most kills its basically required that you have atleast 2 battle rezes saved for the tank in this phase. Healing the raid is secondary in this phase, really. As long as people are topped before the next Dire Call and CDs are used according to plan, all other heals should be absolutely spammed into tanks. Non-tanks shouldn't take any other damage this phase at all, unless they let their spirits hit them. And I think it goes without saying, but charges should be ran to the tanks.

The biggest issue we had on gates was people AoEing. The only gate where you want AoE is gate 2 to burn effusions before they cast. All the other gates should be heavy single target on the first add that comes down, with only cleaves/DoTs on the other two. For gate 3 and 4 you want to kill the first one, then go dinomancer to 50%, then switch back to the 2 main adds. Little adds are always secondary.

Door 3 little adds need to be ran to the tank so that you can cleave them. Door 4, we have 2-3 interrupters on flame casters, protectors are just tanked. Single burn the warbear, interrupt the shamans chain lightning. Melee who get hexed need to stop attacking until its off.

If you keep having BRs used/People dead on the doors, you will never kill this fight. Identify whats killing people, and if its their own fault they need to improve or be sat. This is what we had to do until people started learning to not fuck up. Things that can help people living; BoP on rending charge, hand of purity on rending charge, more non healer dispells. Disarms stop door 3 warlord from casting mortal strike, so chain Ring of Peace and single disarms.

As for dps numbers, they will be a little bit off because you never got later in the fight, but a lot of improvement can be made.

Druids and Ele at the top is correct, they are quite strong for door phases. If your dps know how to play it, Destruction > Affliction for warlocks and Unholy > Frost for dks on this fight (you only want passive cleave on 3/4 doors). Your 3rd moonkin Xeke is consistently under performing, and having 3 ret paladins can gimp you a little bit. People just need to optimize their play and stop dieing to shit on the ground. Only way to do this is practice for most people.

As mentioned above, if Jalak casts a 4th bestial cry you lose. You will want cooldowns for each bestial cry, lighter ones and healing throughput cooldowns. You will want to save disc bubble/smokebomb for enraged direcalls. You could use spirit link, banner/rally + tranq, banner/rally + tranq on the 3 calls.

Once Jalak is dead, you need a 20% or higher raid mitigation cooldown for each dire call. Smoke Bomb/Disc Bubbles are your best bet here. Aside from dire calls, there is 0 dps on the raid, dire calls are about 1 minute apart. This is good because the tanks face will be getting stomped. The tank needs a damage reduction cooldown for any puncture above 2. Either his own, or an external; pain supp/sac/ironbark. Once the tank has no cooldowns left for himself, the next tank takes it and/or when forbearance is still up. I'd recommend 3-4 stacks, though we run this fight with 3 tanks.

Happy Hunting

Edit: Have first and second interrupt assigned for Dinomancer. Feral also has a bad time on this fight (along with your 3 rets this really gimps your damage). /stopcasting apparently cancels the channel on clicking the orb, and lets him charge. This will stop 1 melee from being pacified while clicking.